National Science Foundation Redesign

Our Interviewees were people familiar with he NSF website. We conducted our interviews by having four users go through a set of five tasks. We wanted to test out each important tab on the website to get a full scope of what works and what needs improvement.

We interviewed 6 people using the 5 second user test method and found we needed to clarify the National Science Foundation as the owner of the website. To do so, we incorporated the logo and added the name of the National Science Foundation to the top of the page.

After analyzing the information we received, each group member annotated usability and heuristic issues for 5 pages from the NSF website. We wanted to highlight want needed the most improvement based on our users feedback.

The Search Bar:

The user doesn’t see this search bar which is of major importance when it comes to searching for keywords and information throughout the document.

Global Navigation:

Doesn’t stand out to let the user know that this is the main navigation bar. There is a major issue with the layout of the information when you hover over the buttons. Also lacks consistency and standards.

The Awards Page:

The website changed very drastically when we clicked the Awards page. It made users feel disoriented about if the navigate was still the one before. The primary navigation also changed from being on the side to the top. Overall, most pages lack consistency and standards as well as poor UI Design, which makes navigating the site difficult. (example: busy/repetitive colors and shapes that makes navigation confusing/the way the font and text is displayed)

We took all the information we gathered and created a desktop and mobile prototype using Figma.

We conducted 8 usability tests. 4 were focused on our mobile prototype, and 4 were focused on our desktop prototype. Our testers struggled to use the dropdown menu and we concluded that using a scroll bar would be easier for our users. We also added the map showing the NSF’s global influence to the mobile version, which we had previously removed. We removed it to make things less complicated but felt we didn’t want to lose its impact and reorganized the page so it would fit.

We interviewed 6 people using the 5 second user test method and found we needed to clarify the National Science Foundation as the owner of the website. To do so, we incorporated the logo and added the name of the National Science Foundation to the top of the page.

Our final High-Fidelity Prototype was informed largely through testing, which helped clarify important requirements of the user and guided us towards a tasteful redesign. As a result of this process, we identified the original elements that held value, those which would benefit from a reordering and those which should be retired completely. We feel the design of our navigation and the simplification of our UI is far more user friendly than the original.

The mobile platform of our final High-Fidelity Prototype revealed itself as a challenging redesign as the initial iteration produced an over-simplification of the desktop version. Ultimately it was revealed there was space to include all of the important elements of the desktop version in the mobile version, as long as our design was implemented thoughtfully.